Google's 'Phantom' Algorithm Update Hits Websites

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It looks like that update we reported on last month (here) is having a pretty significant financial impact on a wide variety of websites.

HubPages, a collection of more than 870,000 miniblogs covering everything from the "History of advertising" to "How to identify venomous house spiders," saw its Google search traffic plunge 22 percent on May 3 from the prior week. Of the company's 100 top pages, 68 lost visitors over that stretch.
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According to Searchmetrics, which tracks search traffic, there was a clear pattern of a decline in visibility for certain how-to sites, mostly pertaining to those with "thin content," or lacking much value.
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Looks like the update is working fine. Paying $1-$5 for a web page of crap doesn't entitle the owner to a certain level of traffic. They gamed Google and Google changed the rules they were exploiting.
 
HubPages a.k.a. a place for online marketers to put spam comments to meet arbitrary "goals." "Hey we posted to 100 sites this month!"
 
Is this why I now have to go back 7-8 pages when I type hard into the search box? Before it was only 2 or 3 pages back.
 
Good is downgrading little guy sites because they are the least likely to have google ads, analytics, etc. and definitely least likely to advertise or pay for placement.

The web should be for corporations and organizations that will give google money one way or another..
 
now if they would cut that goddamned "fixya" off at the knees
 
It hasn't fixed the slew of crap 'news' sites that have robots post 'articles' about literally everything. If I type "half life 3" into the news search, I want real sites, even if the articles are older.
 
So now everyone has to design for mobile even though that may not be their target audience? What sucks is forum aggregator sites will probably rank even higher now as being just text they'll be mobile friendly. Search for a problem and find the same forum post 40 times.

Can't complain much though, my site seems unaffected despite not being mobile optimized. Probably because it has adsense. :p
 
Red Squirrel said:
So now everyone has to design for mobile even though that may not be their target audience?
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If mobile isn't your target audience, this won't affect you. This only affects people searching from their mobile device. Results on the desktop shouldn't change.
 
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